Abstract 2106 Development of High Sensitivity Quantitative Methods for Short Oligonucleotides in Biological Samples

Short oligonucleotides of fewer than 100 bases, such as microRNA (miRNA) and cell-free DNA (cfDNA), play important roles in normal and disease-state biology. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), particularly quantitative PCR (qPCR), has been the foundation of DNA and RNA research for decades. However conventional PCR amplification is not possible at the short length scales of miRNA and many cfDNAs of interest. To address this challenge, various approaches have been developed towards oligonucleotide amplification at short length scales, with rolling circle amplification (RCA) standing out for its simplicity and the quantitative benefits of linear amplification profiles.